By Brian Carnell

Tuesday, May 14, 2002

Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, Jr. recently ripped in to the new head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri. Pachauri was rightly mystified.

Pachauri, of course, came to head up the IPCC after the George W. Bush administration worked behind the scenes to ditch former head Dr. Robert Watson. Gore did not approve of this change and in an op-ed published in The New York Times wrote,

The administration threw its weight behind the 'lets drag our feet' candidate, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri of New Delhi, who is known for his virulent anti-American statements.

That assertion was a bit odd, as Pachauri wrote in a letter to The New York Times in reply, given Gore's past praise for Pachauri. In a 1991 speech, for example, Pachauri noted that,

Mr. Gore, referring to my 'commitment,' 'vision' and 'dedication,' said: 'Pachy is the one person in the world who could bring us all here. He is known all over the community of concerned men and women as someone with the intellect and the heart.

Gore also acknowledged Pachauri in his book, Earth in the Balance as being "among the other scientists who have been helpful in giving me advice during the writing of this book."

And yet it is people like Gore who attack global warming skeptics as being dupes who put politics ahead of science and principal.

Source:

Scientific Goring. Nick Schultz, TechCentralStation.Com, May 3, 2002.

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